“I know her family,” Andrew nodded. “I do not like them.” He’d never said that before. Not to Della or anyone else. He had liked them, when they were children. He’d thought they lived a charmed life he’d never be able to attain. As he grew older, as he heard all they’d done to Della, he grew less and less fond of them. It felt freeing to actually admit it.
“We are in agreement on that.” Clara nodded once more, then she turned the doorknob.
Andrew took a step forward, into the open doorway. Everythinghappened very suddenly, then. He was one half step inside when Clara whirled around him, trapping him in the fabric of those flowing trousers she wore. He was so disoriented he didn’t realize what was happening until he heard the door close.
And there was Della. With him. Alone.
He was fairly sure he was in the midst of a grand sitting room with plush furniture and burnished golden wallpaper. Everything shone in a bright, metallic haze, but all he saw was her.
He remembered her eyes. They were deep, dark blue. Like a midnight sky, and her hair was dark, almost raven black with only a hint of brown showing through when the light hit it, flowing over her shoulders in waves. Her round face. Those freckles. Hell, he even remembered how her left eyebrow somehow arched higher than the right. She sat in an armchair in the opposite corner of the room. She couldn’t be farther from him unless she jumped out the window, but he relished being this close. Her posture was stiff, and he noticed her wince as she adjusted herself.
Della was so incandescently beautiful and so close and so precious to him that it made him completely mindless, which is why he said something so foolish.
“Your maid unsettles me.”
He considered himself a reasonably intelligent person. He spoke several languages and had conducted business as a solicitor on three continents, but somehow, for the first words he’d had the opportunity to say to Della’s face in eight years, that was the best he could come up with.
Chapter Eight
Della was immenselygrateful she’d been sitting down. Though she wanted to do Clara bodily harm for this incredible surprise, she may have actually swooned had this happened while upright on her feet.
Andrew was here. In her sitting room. Standing near the door, staring at her. He seemed overdressed, but perhaps that was because she never saw men in the latest fashion anymore. Everything about him felt polished and new and somehow still so achingly familiar. So safe. His hair was still the color of warm chocolate, with more of a curl than she remembered. His big, brown eyes made him seem so serious. So earnest.
His mouth quirked, not in a smile, but in what Della thought was an expression of abject discomfort. That dimple appeared in his cheek, and she was lost. Utterly, irrevocably lost.
“Your maid unsettles me,” he’d said.
How long ago had he said that? Had she been simply staring at him wordlessly, as if trying to communicate by blinking? Della moved as her hip started to scream. She shuffled her feet back and forth against the floor. She crossed one ankle behind the other and hoped the pain she felt didn’t show on her face.
“Clara has that effect on people,” she responded, finally. Della had no way of knowing if she’d done so in anappropriate matter of time. She had no idea what she’d done with her face. Had she even managed to smile at him? She couldn’t recall.
Andrew shifted, too, bearing his weight on one foot then the other. Almost fidgeting. Della remembered herself as she absorbed his awkwardness.
“Please do sit down.” she gestured to an armchair opposite her. Much, much closer than he’d been before. She hadn’t realized the impact those ten or twelve steps would have on her. First, she heard them. Soft footfalls on the plush carpet. Then, she felt him. A sudden hum of awareness down her spine as he entered her space. Della knew how improper this was, this man in her private sitting room. She couldn’t care less.
Della had been lost ever since he came through the door, but she looked up at him now, and she was found.
Her rooms were not particularly sunlit, but the rays streaming through the window illuminated his face and Della had to stifle a gasp. He looked softer, somehow, in this light. The sharp edges of his cheekbones seemed to melt, and his lips relaxed into something that resembled a smile. Della realized all at once that this was someone she’d never met. The Andrew she’d last seen in London was a boy of barely twenty. This was a man who felt familiar but looked entirely changed.
Andrew sat. He observed his surroundings in silence, and his face scrunched up as he looked toward Della’s writing desk. The dimple popped out on his cheek, and Della nearly sighed. Perhaps he was more familiar than not.
“How was your trip?” she asked him, just to break the quiet. He didn’t look particularly travel weary, but she feared he never would. He was simply too handsome for something as trivial as travel to dampen his appearance.
He didn’t answer for the longest time, continuing his perusal of the room. Although the lack of conversation felt less than comfortable toDella, oddly enough, so did the thought of talking. Perhaps he felt the same. They’d shared so much in writing for so long, that she found she didn’t know how to speak to him anymore. She couldn’t put on the mask she wore with the few strangers with whom she interacted, one of politeness and entirely artificial charm. Sitting in front of her at this moment was a true rarity in her life. He was someone who knew her, and she found she didn’t know how to deal with that.
“Andrew?” she prodded, finally. He’d been looking so intently at the wallpaper she wondered if he were counting each bloom within the floral pattern.
“I am sorry.” He shook his head and laughed, seemingly at himself. It wasn’t the laugh she remembered. That had been open and free. This one felt sardonic and somehow guarded. “What is it you said?”
“I asked about your trip.” She repositioned herself again, but she realized she was running out of comfortable shapes to contort her body into. Soon, she’d simply have to move, whether she liked it or not.
“Oh. Yes. It was quite an easy journey, all things considered.” He stated simply. He was looking at her now, finally, and Della almost wished he’d go back to his study of the room. The deep, complex brown of his eyes was entirely too intense. There was a necklace her mother used to wear, made of large, heavy brown zircon stones. Della remembered that color so vividly, how it sparkled and shifted from gold to bronze to brown depending on the light. It was as if his eyes were made of such gemstones, and his gaze was much more than a woman so delicate should have to handle.
“You seem rather... focused on the room,” she said. There had to be a topic of conversation, she supposed. So, she pointed out the obvious.
“I am,” he confirmed with a polite nod that made a curl fall over his forehead. “It’s not what I’d pictured. I suppose it was silly of me to have imagined you in some decrepit hovel all of these years, when youseem to be getting on rather well in your golden rooms.”
Della wasn’t sure what was more of an assault on her sensibilities—that one rogue curl or the idea that he’d been imagining her at all.
